Ask Leo

Are there any ethical/environmental residential care homes for the elderly out there?Kristoffer Hewitt, Brighton

I think you have hit on a good business proposition here, because I can't find anywhere that completely matches your brief and surely there will be a growing demand for such homes. Both Southern Cross and Bupa, the country's two largest privately owned care home providers, publish plenty of information about their environmental performance - Bupa has even calculated that its "CO² emissions per bed" stood at 4.01 tonnes in 2006 - but to date there aren't any independently audited energy efficiency targets for care homes. Even though a study by the University of York last year, called Greening the Greys, said that the over-50s were the nation's "worst carbon culprits", most performance targets understandably focus on the warmth and wellbeing of residents.

Co-operatives UK, the union of the cooperative movement, says there are some excellent cooperative day-care providers including Shepshed Carers in Leicestershire, Carers Direct in south Devon and Sunderland Home Care. With low pay and working conditions an ever-present concern of care workers, most cooperatives have been set up by staff disillusioned with working for privately owned homes.